Arsenic has always been deemed to be “poisonous”, and testing is required for most food/drugs to show that the presence of arsenic is within acceptable limits. However, an organism has been found to thrive on it!

WASHINGTON – BACTERIA that thrive on arsenic have been scooped from the depths of a California lake, a discovery that redefines the building blocks of life and offers new hope in the search for extraterrestrial beings.

Photo from Reuters.com

Not only do the bacteria survive on arsenic, they also grow by incorporating the element into their DNA and cell membranes, said the study funded by the US space agency NASA and published on Thursday in the journal Science.